Deuteronomy 15:13

Summary

Deuteronomy 15:13 instructs that when a bondservant is released, he must not be sent away empty-handed. The verse is structured as a conditional clause followed by a negative prohibition, both built on the same verb repeated for emphasis.

Key words

• techalle'chennu ("you will let go him", H7971H) — piel imperfect with pronominal suffix; the piel stem intensifies the basic sense of "sending away," here meaning a deliberate act of release/manumission, repeated twice in the verse (once in the conditional clause, once in the prohibition).
• choshi ("a free [person]", H2670) — masculine singular adjective describing the status the person receives upon release, functioning as a predicate complement to the verb of sending.
• me'immakh ("from with you", H9006+H5973B+H9031) — preposition plus preposition-with-article-like form plus second-person suffix, indicating separation from the household or presence of the one releasing him.
• lo ("not", H3808) — negation particle introducing the prohibition clause that follows the conditional.
• reiqam ("emptily", H7387) — adverb specifying the manner of departure that is forbidden; it modifies the second occurrence of techalle'chennu.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence divides into two parallel clauses sharing the same verb, techalle'chennu ("you will let go him", H7971H), each time in piel imperfect with a third-person masculine singular suffix meaning "him." The first clause is introduced by ve-khi ("and if", H9002+H3588A), establishing a conditional scenario: the act of sending the person away as choshi ("a free [person]", H2670) — a predicate adjective describing the resulting free status — me'immakh ("from with you", H9006+H5973B+H9031), meaning away from the speaker's household or possession.

The second clause repeats the identical verb form techalle'chennu but now negated by lo ("not", H3808), creating a direct grammatical parallel: the same action (sending away) is first stated conditionally, then restricted by a prohibition. The prohibition is qualified by the adverb reiqam ("emptily", H7387), which specifies the manner forbidden — the sending itself is permitted and even assumed, but doing so without provision is not. The repetition of the verb root in both clauses creates a chiastic emphasis: the act of release is affirmed, but its manner is constrained by the adverbial modifier at the end.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the conditional ve-khi with hotan de ("but when"), shifting from a conditional to a temporal nuance, and translates choshi ("free [person]") as eleutheron ("free"), an adjective agreeing with the object rather than a separate predicate noun. The Vulgate renders the entire construction more freely with quem libertate donaveris ("whom you have granted with liberty"), using an ablative noun libertate rather than a direct adjectival equivalent to choshi, and expresses the prohibition with nequaquam vacuum abire patieris ("you shall by no means allow to depart empty"), employing a causative construction absent from the Hebrew's direct verb repetition.